Jamie Bartlett is the Director of the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media at the think tank Demos. He specialises in online culture and the dark net. He is currently writing a book on internet subcultures to be published in 2014 by William Heinemann.

Gangs are turning to social media. Not a smart move…

Gangs and criminals used to want to keep themselves secret and hidden: it makes good sense to if you’re breaking the law. But they too are increasingly swept up in the social media impulse to share every personal detail of our lives with complete strangers. And it’s a great boon to the police, who happily sit back and watch them incriminate themselves.

A recent survey in the US journal Justice Quarterly polled gang members about their social media presence. Remarkably, more than half of gangsters polled in the report stated that their gang had its own social media page, where videos were posted, usually for some sort of mild PR: threatening other gang members, appearing in rival turf, or generally trying to look badass by posting pictures of themselves with guns, swag et cetera. Vice has collated a number of these YouTube videos.

It goes all the way from international drugs cartels to low-level armed robbers. Until recently, the Knights Templar Cartel, a Mexican drugs syndicate, ran a popular Facebook page, full of sexy selfies and guns. In October, a gang of robbers from Kent were arrested after they’d posted selfies to a Blackberry messenger group called "Armed Robbers". The photo collection included one of a man wearing a balaclava holding a gun – in another he wore the same pyjama bottoms used during the raid.

Michele Grasso, a fugitive on the run from Italian police, posted pictures of himself at London’s Madame Tussauds museum and included a photo and the name of the restaurant where he was working. Over in the US, two rival gangs – "The Very Crispy Gangsters" and "The Rockstarz" – took their dispute online. Facebook groups were started and rivals would join, posting threats and insults. As it ramped up, they began to boast about murders and retaliation attacks that had taken place. After the killing of a VCG gangster, members of the Rockstarz posted comments like "up 3-0".

Of course, it’s all open and public – otherwise rivals wouldn’t see it and you’d get no kudos. Criminals want to boast and show off as much as, probably more than, the rest of us. But they aren’t the only ones watching. At Scotland Yard, YouTube has become an incredibly valuable resource to allow specialists to piece together gang networks, monitor activity, and collect incriminating evidence. Evidence from social media led to the downfall of all our narcissistic crooks showcased above. As far back as 2009, Strathclyde Police launched Operation Access, which used social networking sites such as Facebook to uncover criminal activity by identifying weapons carriers.

This is the theatre for modern policing. Social media routinely provides valuable and important information in all manner of criminal and terrorist investigations. Knowing how to find it, collect it, and use it is an important new capability for the police. That’s also when, how and why the police monitor social media needs to be made clear. As it stands, the legal basis for police collecting and using social media data is anything but – the law that covers this sort of thing, the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, is over a decade old. It was passed long before social networking and badly needs a refresh.

It’s a tricky balancing act between security and liberty of course, and too often it’s only ever discussed through the lens of civil liberties. As these cases also show, internet monitoring can also help keep us safe. But it has to be proportionate, publicly argued, and based in law. Following the allegations made by Edward Snowdon, the issue of internet monitoring by the authorities has become a major public concern. My sense is that the police and intelligence services are ready to be slightly more amenable than usual to working publicly how we can get that balance right. This year might be the year it happens.